AnyLogic North America

Facebooks Location Feature Will Help Companies Build Better Models

Facebook is preparing to roll out a new feature that will identify user’s locations and will allow the ability of advertisers to more accurately target users geographic data.

McDonald’s will be the first brand to test the new features. The McDonald’s integration will involve users checking in at McDonald’s restaurants and showing featured food items in their posts. Digital advertising and marketing shops around the country are preparing to construct campaigns around this new functionality.

What this means for Agent Based Simulation:

By integrating the data of some of the 400 million Facebook users, agent based models and simulations will be able to more accurately simulate the dynamics of the market.

Knowing what and where users react to advertising and promotions will allow companies to identify the trends of multiple markets, not only geographically but by age and status as well.

Agent based simulation and system dynamics are only as good as the information provided. The ability to tap into enormous user groups who have a record of willingly providing valuable information into likes and dislikes will prove incredibly valuable.

How Healthcare Simulation is Helping Us Understand Diseases

For much of the last century, modern medicine has invested in the treatment of diseases and illnesses, and very little on the prevention of these diseases.

Part of this is due to the invention of antibiotics and disease fighting medicines that had never been available before. This ability to identify the illness and prescribe a solution to said illness was found to be much easier and much more effective than planning for and preventing diseases. The reason for this is because of the many variables involved. With prevention you are trying to identify the root cause of a problem and identify a plan for preventing it. This was thought to be much more expensive than simply identifying the problem and treating it.

Healthcare Simulation

With recent advances in healthcare simulation we are finding that this is not always the case. Take for example cardiovascular disease, the number 1 worldwide killer of men and women according to the Mayo Clinic. With a simple simulation model, similar to the one that can be viewed here, we can quickly identify the enormous cost of treating this disease, as well as identify those most vulnerable.

By lowering the costs of prevention, healthcare simulation is playing a vital role in our understanding and prevention of diseases.

To learn more about this topic visit our white paper page on healthcare simulation.

The Soft Part is the Hard Part

Our world is composed of two types: the analysts who build models and the executives or customers who receive them.  You can't be successful unless you (a) get a good technical result, and (b) effectively communicate that result.  Now, which do you think is harder?  Where do projects fail?

Many modeling efforts approach the big client presentation with exhausted modelers and exhausted budgets.  And somehow they expect their customer, over the course of a short hour, to come up to speed on all the concepts, problem solving, and elegant constructs they've labored over for months.  Instead, the customers' eyes glaze over and enthusiasm wanes.

It takes time and multiple cycles to bring your customer up to speed.  Here's one approach you may try.  Build your models in a spiral, or rapid prototyping if you prefer that terminology, and provide many interim peeks as your work progresses.  You may gain valuable input from the user, but at the very least you will lower the hill he has to climb on the final presentation.  He's watched it evolve.  One simple implementation of this in AnyLogic is to generate applets at various milestones.  These can play in any browser (so your clients don't need special software or training) and provide animation, evolving user interfaces, etc., to keep your customer plugged in.  Consultants may want to abandon lengthy weekly progress reports in Word and spend one minute each Friday exporting an applet to demonstrate true progress.